The Browns’ 2013 Draft Continues to Haunt Cleveland

With Chuck Klosterman’s piece in Grantland offering a rare look at the internal operations of the Cleveland Browns, we have all been dragged back into the world of the 2013 NFL draft.

For some people – particularly those who need something to talk about over Cleveland’s airwaves – this is a wonderful thing. In Klosterman’s piece, he writes about many aspects of the Browns, but in particular he lays out a trade scenario that nearly happened: the Browns would have given up their sixth overall pick in this year’s draft for a 2013 second-rounder, a first-round pick in 2014, another first-rounder in 2015 and two other future selections to a “marquee franchise.”

No doubt this blockbuster trade would have been the talk of the entire draft. And it would have given the Browns some firepower for the next two years.

But it didn’t happen, so everyone should just forget about it.

Sure.

This is Cleveland, and the amount of time that has now been spent bemoaning last month’s draft is reaching a nuclear level.

That’s not to say Klosterman’s piece isn’t interesting or valuable or well-written, because it is all of those things and more. But for a city that second-guesses unlike any other, this piece is a bit of a nightmare. How many fans are going to lie awake at night and dream about what could have been? Probably the same amount who call into radio shows fumbling, flustered and kind of just yelling at no one in particular, like a drug-addled drifter wandering the streets.

It seemed as though we were past the point of nitpicking this draft, at least until the players step on the field for a real game. Call it insecurity or just plain ol’ insanity, but this year’s draft haunts the city like some insatiable force.

This city needs a winner now more than ever.